Karachi: Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City by Laurent Gayer (review)

Laurent Gayer’s work is a valuable contribution to understanding the seemingly chaotic existence of Karachi, an important “megacity” that offers unique but comparative insights for other possible case studies. Gayer builds a case for understanding the “ordered disorder” of Karachi and argues that far from being chaotic and ungovernable, the city’s “order,” or underlying principles of a historical figuration (p. 12), is predicated on patterns of domination, rituals of interaction, and forms of arbitration (p. 5).

The main ingredient of this order is violence that is rooted in social processes, and thus calls for understanding violence as “conflict in motion” (p. 12). Gayer’s question is why Karachi has been spared “a fullblown, free-for-all conflagration” (p. 15) despite decades of violent conflict (p. 13). Instead of understanding violence through deterministic causal explanations, he encourages scholars to adopt a processual approach, i.e. one that is attentive to the contingent and self-generative nature of change (p. 12). Through four mini-studies tracing the escalation of violence on student campuses, the evolution and predominance as a de facto hegemon by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) through coercive means and electoral victories, and emergence of aspiring contenders to control the city in the form of criminal gangs of Lyari and radical Islamic groups such as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Gayer lays out how violence has shaped discourse among the players.

Such an understanding of violence and “order” departs from the traditional understanding of social order in sociology and political science as that of the state’s monopoly over violence. Instead, it is premised on Norbert Elias’s sense of a “game structure,” which revolves around interdependent actors and which reproduces itself over time, acquiring a social form even in times of seeming chaos (p. 12). Thus, violence will keep reproducing itself in different forms as a result of interactions and interdependencies over time. The Pakistani state, Gayer argues, plays the role of referee amid the different power players, sometimes overtly supporting one actor, and at times providing patronage to others covertly. The result is production of a complex “ordered disorder,” which is exemplified by an increasing number of violent entrepreneurs and atomization of political and criminal violence.

Gayer’s work adds to the repository of work on Karachi¹ and is a brilliant treatise of understanding conflict in Karachi through a well-researched and holistic account of the city’s many protagonists and problems, from its violence-ridden everyday realities to the deregulated provision of basic amenities to overt and covert alliances between the state and different players. His account is strengthened by evidence he collected over eight months of field work within twelve years, interviews with activists, political party members, militants, and social workers as well as reviews of local press, Urdu poetry, and political party literature.

This book’s strength lies in its approach to disentangle the discourse of social order and violence from statist explanations and root them in social processes and histories. Gayer adds credence to his argument by linking Karachi’s narrative to groundbreaking work on “emergent orders” and “twilight institutions,” or de facto authorities in contemporary African contexts that have come about after protracted bouts of conflict. It is what Ken Menkhaus calls “governance without government” in his case study of Somalia,² where coalitions of business groups, traditional authorities, and civic groups are contributing to more “organic” forms of public order.

Gayer does not go as far as calling “order” in Karachi a parallel form of governance but does point out competing sovereignties in different parts of the city where the Pakistani state is at best a referee. He also cautions us to refrain from narrowing the debate about whether the Pakistani state has failed or collapsed or is weak, and replace it with the understanding of everyday functioning and negotiation of authority. After all, the existence of deregulated provision of basic services such as housing or...